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The original was badass even if it was very unforgivably difficult in some places. It easily takes a place as one of the most memorable video game storylines I've played through.

Here's hoping Mafia 2 has less of the "walk around corner and die instantly because on your first play-through you have no way of knowing that there's a guy with a double barrel shotgun waiting in a place you can't see from outside" moments. It was very frustrating in a few missions where you were pretty much forced to die so that you would know how to get through the room successfully the next time, only to then die in the next room.

I quite liked how unforgiving it was. Made me play differently.
It made it more tense. The level where you have to go through the prison to get the assassination spot was excellent and deadly
I'm not normally one for hard games, but with Mafia if fit the feel of the game perfectly.

If anything, I'm hoping M2 isn't too streamlined or forgiving. The clunky feel and punishing bits made it feel like 1930s gangster times.

It probably wouldn't be so bad if enemies didn't have the ability to instakill you with lucky headshots. It's just bad design, and kind of immersion-breaking, when a game virtually requires you to die to beat it for the first time.

It also made me feel like a really, really shitty player when I'd die to the easiest enemies in the game because they got lucky and clipped my skull with a random potshot.

I actually found the ability to be insta-killed increased the immersion for me. Rather than feeling like a section of game, I actually felt like I was in a firefight which involved dangerous projectiles coming my way. If it had been done even slightly differently, I'd have hated it, like I say - I'm not big on really hard games. I'm not saying it was perfect either, just that it was the right configuration and combination of elements for me (and presumably some others), so I'm not really arguing your points as they're perfectly valid, just padding out my perspective.

The race I feel ambivalent about. On the one hand, it had me swearing at the designers and frusrated as ALL HELL that I had to do it to progress (p.s. I've never enjoyed driving games that aren't Carmageddon / Twisted Metal / GTA); but on the other hand, the feeling I got when I finally beat it after more than 40 attempts, was close to orgasmic. Saying that, this is probably a bit of Stockholm Syndrome creeping in..

You know, I read from a TON of people that the race was stupidly hard, but I breezed right through it.

The car chase to the warehouse, or the dock or whatever the hell that I totally forget now, was a different story though. That thing kicked my ass so hard that I actually put the game down for 6 months before I finally finished it. The car I'm chasing takes a quick left turn, I wait a second too long to make the same turn, failed. And so on and so forth for the 28748957348 turns in the route - and then finally, when I had the whole trip memorized and down solid, random traffic would spawn a little differently and I'd plow into a streetcar or something ridiculous that hadn't been there on my last drive through. I don't remember being so frustrated in my life.

It's just bad design, and kind of immersion-breaking, when a game virtually requires you to die to beat it for the first time.

Wow times have changed.

If there's no personal improvement, how can there be accomplishment?
If there's no punishment, how can there be reward?
I can get the point of Mafia's difficulty being unfair but that statement is wrong on all counts.

And still, I'm with faetal here. The tough levels and gunfights in Mafia reinforced the immersion and gave some additional depth to an otherwise good game. The racing level, on the other hand, frustrated me a bit too much.

I also like how it's possibly the only game where if you reload half way through a clip, you lose the bullets that you discard. As small a thing as that sounds, it made huge differences to the way you behaved around your ammo and reloads.

Should have disclaimed with "only game I've played".
I think Mafia generates a great deal of its feel through clunkiness and discomfort.
I don't feel like a specially trained superhuman Delta Force tank, I feel like a guy with a gun trying to stay alive and get a job done.

If there's no personal improvement, how can there be accomplishment?
If there's no punishment, how can there be reward?
I can get the point of Mafia's difficulty being unfair but that statement is wrong on all counts.

I think you're misunderstanding what I said for "punishment."

Yes, there absolutely should be a reason to do better, and Mafia's very harsh method of punishment (reloading you to the beginning of the mission, or infrequently, a 'checkpoint) isn't what I would call a bad thing. I'm all for it.

The flaws come in when there are no amounts of skill that can save you. My immersion is broken when the game requires that I already know what's going to happen to be able to beat the game - that the only way I can pass through a room is to have died there once.

I want to say that it was the prison sniper thingy that was a particularly good example of this, but I could be wrong on that location (it's been years and years since I played) - where enemies would be hiding in the corners behind doors, so if you didn't fire shots at the door or sidestep around it, you'd die instantly. But on the other hand, if you entered every room doing that, you'd die to the other enemies hiding in different areas of the room. You had to know exactly where your enemies were or you'd be looking at a reload screen.

Now replay it in unpatched game (1.0), you'll be impressed too.

I actually did play the race pre-patch. The patch didn't come out until after I took my break - which is what I attribute to beating the car chase. :P

Usually, yes.
Mafia is the first game that forced me to change my play style and actually made me feel rewarded for it.
Regarding the "no amount of skill.." comment above, it's this which I liked best. In real life, a head shot will kill you and any shot will likely incapacitate you. Mafia was slightly more realistic than a lot of games, so there's an element of random chance in the shooting elements, that's a good thing.
Skill can prevent many things, but it's refreshing when the opposite team can get lucky too.